Pubdate: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 Source: The Monitor (TX) Copyright: 2002 The Monitor Contact: http://www.themonitor.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1250 BAD COMBINATION Columnist Robert D. Novak recently made the ludicrous suggestion that President George W. Bush should intertwine the war on terrorism with the nation's failed war on drugs. Novak reasoned that since states are less willing to sponsor terrorism these days for fear of an international response, terrorists are raising the money needed for their nefarious deeds through trafficking in illegal drugs. Novak is, in this regard, correct. The Taliban used the sale of heroin to raise money. In addition, the Taliban ironically received money from the United States by merely promising to fight drugs; money that was used to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. However, Novak is wrong in his solution. He accepts the false premise that government can eliminate commerce in drugs by killing and imprisoning people who choose to buy or sell narcotics and other drugs. The answer is not to tie the war on terrorism to the failed war on drugs. Terrorists use the profit from drug sales. The only way to stop that activity is to eliminate the profit margin. By legalizing drugs and ending the nonsensical prohibition, the cost of drugs would decrease and the United States would effectively eliminate funding for terrorists - along with reducing the U.S. crime rate, prison overcrowding and a host of other domestic problems caused by the failed war on drugs. It's time to stop this futile effort to save people from themselves. Drug abuse is not a criminal problem, but a social one. Law-abiding citizens have lost many civil liberties in the name of the drug war. Police officers have become soldiers in a war with a military mentality. Drug raids are conducted by officials wearing masks. Property is seized without a conviction. The Bill of Rights is but a speed bump to drug warriors. What a peaceable person decides to put into his body is no business of government. The United States should focus its war on terrorism against terrorist and not against the use of drugs by American citizens. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom